AEROGP'S PROFILE

From the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to bed. And I sleep 8-10 hours a day, so that's about 16 hours everyday except 1st and 4th Sunday.

@GreatRedSpirit:
I've never really questioned Elmdor's involvement. When I first had FFT, it was a rental and I didn't make it past the end of Chapter 2 before I had to bring the game back. Despite seeing Elmdor again briefly at the beginning of Chapter 3, it didn't dawn on me that this guy who's attacking me at Riovannes is the same guy I fucking risked my life to save as my first priority mission in Chapter 1. Thus, the huge plot point really flew past me.

When I finally came to that realization, though, it didn't bother me much. You've only recently been branded a heretic by the church after killing a priest who used 'holy stones' to become the devil. Your brothers have disowned you, you're not even particularly on good terms with your best friend, either, and anyone who has gotten wind that you're a heretic wants your head for dessert. This really isn't surprising to me. I mean, It's not even the first time, at the end of a chapter, you're forced to kill a prentious cock you once saved... (although you don't get to fully kill Elmdor... yet)

So yeah, I accept "ha ha, I'm evil now" as perfectly legitimate. Pretty much everyone that didn't join your party or was emotionally involved with a potential party member was plain evil (Dycedarg) or was equally as vulnerable as you, as if he/she was holding a sign up saying "Please kill me." (Zalbag... poor, poor Zalbag) The exception to this, of course, is Galfgarion... what a pain in the ass for anyone who didn't know about him beforehand...

As I mentioned earlier, that's not easy to do. Even if you could find a happy medium, players that associate the cost of replay with genuine challenge are likely not to compromise on that experience. It's all rooted in the player's perception of what makes a game fun for them. Someone who plays games like Mega Man on a daily basis may come to anticipate having to go through the motions every time they lose, and feel alienated when that process is not there.

The real question is whether allowing this is fundamentally wrong. Shadowtext's basis for believing so is that the other 80% of people who play games are forced to fight with the 20% who like the masochism for the attention of developer's support, and that's unfair.

In my opinion, it's one thing if you don't care about catering to as wide an audience as possible, but it's another to call that "bad game design." If "wussies" want to play your game and succeed at it, why deny them the right? Some preconceived elitist notion that they shouldn't be playing in the first place, or should be reading a book instead?

Removing tedium is hard. Developers have been using it for so long as a means to artificially increase difficulty, most gamers find it interchangeable with "challenge" or can't really tell the difference anymore. Furthermore, the biggest flaw in the kind of positive reinforcement you're suggesting, Shadow (even though I completely agree with you), is that most players anticipating challenge want their objectives on auto-pilot. If they're forced to look for the challenge or make it for themselves, they're likely not to notice it and will eventually stop playing. They'd rather it be a natural part of the game than something optional they can invest their time in.

author=GoldenYoshi link=topic=2479.msg58237#msg58237 date=1232877575
-Levelling up. That the main reason I don't love RPGs.

It's hard to represent immaterial growth without a leveling system. Usually, you end up with some kind of puzzle-type gameplay that you'd never pick up again after you beat it.